Afterword

After I finished this book, I was reading a variety of books belonging to the emerging research area of the science of storytelling. The reason for this was that I have three or four more nonfiction books, like this one, that I would like to write, and then I plan to turn to fiction. The science of storytelling provides some foundation for understanding what makes stories meaningful. And, while I am not sure if anyone came out and said this, it became apparent to me that meaning in general is not possible without order. This is a bit of a leap, but I chose to spare you the thought process that led up to it. Instead, allow me to provide a simple example.  

Dump a set of scrabble tiles on a tabletop. Let the tiles fall where they may. Now look at the tiles and see if you can garner any meaning out of them. Probably not. However, if you organize the tiles into words and then look at them, they will have some meaning, specifically the associations you have for each of the words. If you select words and put them into sentences, they will have more meaning. And if that sentence provides pithy wisdom about life, it will have even more meaning.

Your life experiences are like a collection of tiles. You will get some meaning for free the same way that you might infer random meaning from various sets of tiles that fell together. For example, a few tiles may have fallen together to spell a short word. But, if you want to get more meaning, you will have to organize them intentionally and may have to reorganize them to find an organization that provides the most meaning. But, without a great deal of work, you will not derive as nearly as much meaning from a pile of scrabble tiles as you will from even a very short story. Without putting effort into the construction of meaning, your access to meaning will be severely limited.  

To follow this analogy a little further, any short story will provide more meaning than the pile of scrabble tiles. But some short stories will be much more meaningful than others. That is why it is a good idea to read widely and to go beyond short stories.

Similarly, as I implied this throughout this book, but did not come right out and say it - you cannot have meaning without order. This was implied by all instances in which I said something to the effect that you need to organize your experiences according to some sense making framework. Not just any sense making framework, but one that works for you.

I also had a second, much less significant but hopefully as interesting, epiphany regarding the quest for meaning in life. There are some useful parallels between food and meaning that can be used to provide greater insight into the search for meaning. If you go to your refrigerator and cannot find anything to eat, would you give up and let yourself starve, or would you go out and get some food? Similarly, if you found your life was lacking in meaning (as the refrigerator is lacking in food) would you resign yourself to a meaningless life or would you go out and get some meaning? You would not expect food to just show up in your refrigerator and you should not expect meaning to just show up in your life.

But the analogy does not end there. You want your food to be high quality nutritious food to gain the most out of it. If your doctor informed you that your diet was low in nutrition, you might protest that you get plenty to eat. After all, you polish off a bag of chips with a few beers every night. And that comes after a pizza or a meatball sub for dinner. Your doctor might point out that you need to cut back on junk food and eat more nutritious food. Similarly, you might derive meaning from working your way up the leaderboard of your favorite video game. But this is junk food meaning. I am not saying that you need to give up either meatball subs or video games. I am saying, however, that you need higher quality meaningful experiences as well. So, go read a book, or see a classic movie, or travel somewhere and learn about the culture.

If you are interested in my foray into fiction writing and the science of storytelling, you may want to check out my blog at LegoCogitoScribo.blogspot.com . Don’t let the Latin put you off. It simply means - I Read, I Think, I Write.

This Afterword is 787 words long.